Tuesday Before the Storm
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Before everything began Lenin once asked Riddle Inc. for a loan to fund his revolution; Frank reminisces. Side fic to "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus"
**Author's Note: A warning that this is a side fic to the ridiculously AU and long "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and if you haven't read a couple chapters into that you'll be kind of confused. Or you could just read this and think 'very very AU snapshot' with a vampire named Frank, that could work too.**

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"And why exactly should we fund your… pureblood wizarding revolution?"

A fun fact, vampires could actually get drunk, not easily but it could happen. The alcoholic content of their victims blood simply had to be astronomical. So if you found some washed up drunkard in the gutter who'd destroyed his liver in a single sitting then there was a slim chance that you could get drunk.

It had personally never happened to Frank but he'd heard of it happening back in the old country.

All Frank had really experienced was the odd cotton mouth and somewhat bad tang that came with someone who had a bit too much foreign substance in their blood stream. Woodstock, he'd heard from a few Americans, while being easy pickings had mostly just given everyone there food poisoning.

That said, on what had seemed like a very reasonable and more or less ordinary sort of day, Frank was wondering if he couldn't try to get drunk. Because there was no other way he could make it through this meeting.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, he looked like… Well, not like he wasn't much, but not like something Frank would want to pay too much attention to either, at least not at a glance.

Frankly, Frank didn't really know what to make of him (and he still hated that his name was a goddamn pun).

The man had walked in, straight in through the front door, demanded to see the boss and had proceeded to wait for over an hour for Lily Riddle to make an appearance that wasn't going to happen. Despite all of this complete confidence he was dressed in muggle clothing, appeared somewhere between twenty and thirty, and was asking for a frighteningly large loan.

Frank had eaten debtors who defaulted on that kind of money. They always tasted like sweat and nauseatingly deep terror at the idea of their day of reckoning. This man… He didn't have that look of desperation in him.

No, he just looked back with those pale blue eyes, the eyes of a gun slinger, Clint Eastwood's eyes, and stared back as if death itself was a thing that couldn't touch him. The way Lily Riddle looked when the time for joking had passed and only imminent death remained.

And Riddle, he'd introduced himself with the last name Riddle, and staring at him Frank could believe that it might be possible.

"I want to speak with your employer." The man said, without hesitation or flinching, even when faced with Frank's narrowed crimson eyes and look of derision.

"Wouldn't we all?" Frank asked, and not snidely either, as he too would very much appreciate it if Lily Riddle were to finally return from her ridiculously long vacation. He would also appreciate it if she had left a number for him to reach her, or an address, or any means by which he could contact her.

Considering she never seemed to age he doubted she was dead, plus the idea of something being able to kill her was frankly bizarre, so he knew she was around somewhere but he would appreciate more leadership and guidance than old notes she'd left around in 1945.

"If you wish to speak to Lily Riddle, Mr. Riddle, I'm afraid you're going to have to make it worth her time. And to do that you have to convince me that it's worth my time." Frank offered a polite smile to the man, which did absolutely nothing to reassure him, and waited for him to continue.

"Worth your time?" Ah, there it was, some sort of reaction out of the man. It didn't show on his face, but there was a flash of it in his eyes and in his voice that he couldn't hide, that he found this utterly insulting.

Cold, pale, blue eyes like the steel of a gun glinting in the American western sunlight.

Just like Lily had described in the note she'd left behind so many years before.

And that was why he wanted to be very drunk, or just ignore the man until he went away, but he'd been there over an hour already and he showed no indication of leaving. No, this man, if he was anything, apparently wasn't a quitter.

"You do know that you're trying to talk to Lily Riddle, correct, whose funds have bought out seven seats in the Wizengamot and who has condemned twenty-seven aurors to be devoured?" Well, that wasn't quite true, Lily herself had not been around for every ambitious auror captain trying to make a name for himself or every undercover wizard trying to find a way in but she had set the precedent on how to dispose of them and keep her terrifying reputation intact. As for the infiltration attempts, it would be adorable, if it weren't quite so sad that they couldn't find a single vampire who had been willing to cross Lily Riddle, and instead had relied on very pale wizards hoping they might pass as a half-breed.

So very incompetent, sometimes Frank didn't wonder if Lily Riddle shouldn't just take over the government in a more official capacity if only to get that bureaucracy in working order.

Frank's thoughts were interrupted by the man, leaning forward, and he had this way of making him seem like the center of the universe. Like every scrap of attention he gave you was a divine gift you might never receive again. And this wasn't like Lily Riddle, it was similar, but it wasn't the same feel to it. This was something new, something Frank hadn't really seen before, but something much more human for it.

"I have certain talents that will convince every eldest son of every lord that I am the second coming of Salazar Slytherin himself. I can make them weep to behold me and follow every word I say. With their support I can take over the government, overhaul it, and transform it into something greater than the massive bureaucracy it has been for the last thirty years." His eyes seemed to pierce through Frank's, into his very soul, "And all I need is the funding."

Well, it was certainly ambitious.

Frank didn't know all that much about the Hogwarts sorting system, the English had a bizarre obsession with it, so that almost every metaphor used by an English wizard was something being Gryffindor or else Slytherin. So, probably, to compare himself to Salazar might be convincing (especially if he talked like that all the time) and who knows they probably would enjoy that sort of thing. It seemed like a very English thing to be into.

But this led Frank to the reason he was so very reluctant.

He didn't like wizards, he never had, and he particularly didn't like English wizards. He was perfectly happy with their incompetent government and the strained state of affairs, with watching them destroy each other from the inside out.

True, they were doing it slowly, very slowly, and a revolution might speed that along but… But it also could make them better and that could make things dangerous. The wizards might get serious about their creature laws, they might learn from their muggle counterparts what extermination entailed, how to wipe a people off the face of the earth. And without Lily Riddle in the office, on their side, that wasn't something Frank was keen on seeing.

This also just felt like a bastardized version of Pygmalion or, no, the musical version My Fair Lady.

He could just picture the merged form of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgens in Tom Marvolo Riddle, masquerading as Salazar Slytherin's reincarnation to the lords of the realm, all while trying to incite them to revolt against the very government which they themselves owned.

…Put like that it actually sounded somewhat entertaining.

That's probably what Lily Riddle had seen in it, decades ago, as she'd scribbled out last minute directions and taped them to the refrigerator. He remembered how she'd seemed that morning, brittle, eyes dark and so far away from them all. Far from the war, from Grindelwald, perhaps even from the earth itself.

"I'm old, Frank. I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like… butter scraped over too much bread." A grim empty smile along with a small spark of humor in her eyes, "I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don't expect I shall return. In fact…"

She hadn't finished that sentence, she'd left it hanging, left it hanging ajar along with the front door as she'd walked out. Half waving without even looking behind, walking out into the night, and then somewhere out into the great wide world.

Those words she hadn't said, I mean not to, ringing for decades in his ears.

Somehow, even back then, she'd seen this man and seen something in him.

His promise as well as his pitiful defeat.

This man was doomed to failure, and he seemed to have no idea, it would probably be better for him if Frank turned him away. Told him to go home, take a vacation, do something that wouldn't lead to a death that Lily Riddle had deemed pitiful. But at the same time, if he did that, then Frank doubted he'd ever come this close to glory again.

If he chose to destroy himself… Frank could hardly be the person to stop him.

"Well, I suppose there's no point putting it off." Frank motioned for the man to follow him into the back office where he reached for his checking book writing off a sum that was nothing to sneeze at but was nothing astronomical either.

"Lily Riddle, unfortunately, has been on vacation since 1945. However, she did leave a note about you and requested that you be given a loan for your revolution." Frank offered the man the aged parchment, watched as his eyebrows raised, as he looked at Frank dubiously and then back towards the note.

"She wrote this?"

"That's how she talks." It did take a bit getting used to and never seemed to be what anyone was expecting of her.

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"She just sounds like… Never mind, it's not important."

He could ask, he supposed, but Frank was a private person himself and respected others enough not to pry too deeply. So instead he offered a thin smile, didn't let his unease, nostalgia, or even pity show in his expression, "Do see that you pay it back."

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 **Author's Note: For those of you wondering, in the Lily verse at least, the beginning stages of Voldemort's revolution was definitely a bastardized form of "My Fair Lady", but with less singing. Also, good old Frank, haven't seen him for a while, or pre revolutionary Lenin. Written for the 3000th review of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" by FemmeFerret who asked for a fic where we see Voldemort asking Frank for his loan.**

 **Thanks to readers, reviews are always appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter**


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